Chapter Text
White’s father had been telling him to forget about his brother for the past ten years. “I haven’t heard from Black or your mother in so long,” he’d say. “You’re better off forgetting about him. I’m sure he’s forgotten about you by now.”
As if. White had never believed it, but now that he was actually outside the garage where his brother supposedly was — well. He hoped he wasn’t wrong.
Todd had said the garage was rundown, not in a great part of town, but White hadn’t cared. If his brother was there, that was what mattered. Todd had said Black got himself involved in some dangerous and potentially illegal shit, that he was running with some dangerous friends, but Black had always protected him before. And even if he didn’t now, well. It didn’t matter. The stranger that was his brother was inside.
“Hello,” he called through the open garage bay doors, then ducked inside.
“Hello, welcome,” someone — not his brother — called, rounding the corner. “How can I help you — Black? Aren’t you washing cars today?”
White’s heart gave a ridiculous little leap. “He’s here?” Then, “I’m his brother, Khun. I’m looking for him.”
“I didn’t know Black had a twin,” the man said, wiping his greasy hands on his coveralls. He must work at this garage.
White never knew what to say when people said this. “Since birth.”
“Black,” the man called over his shoulder. “Your brother is here for you.”
“What,” someone called, someone that sounded like his brother, and White let himself smile as Black rounded the corner.
He looked like he should. Maybe this was weird to think, since White had no idea how Black was going to grow up, but he looked right, somehow. Hands smeared with grease, same as the old flannel he was wearing, and something flinty and sharp in his eyes. It just made sense.
“What the fuck,” Black said flatly, stopping short. He looked at the other man, then back to White. “Hia, did you do this?”
“How the fuck would I do this,” the man in coveralls said, rolling his eyes. “He’s your twin.”
“Sure,” Black said, coming a little closer. Eyes narrowed, pinning White in place.
“Hi, phi,” White said weakly. He’d kind of been hoping for a hug, or a smile or even the way Black’s face would smooth out when they were kids, gentle and almost imperceptible to anyone but White. The way that White could know Black cared about him, more than anything. “I’m… back?”
“Yeah, who the fuck are you then?”
White flinched. He’d at least thought that Black would be happy to see him, not mad enough that he’d pretend White didn’t exist to his face. “Phi, please.”
“I don’t have a little brother,” Black replied. He grabbed White’s chin and tilted his head around, inspecting White’s face, like White was prey in his brother’s hand instead of family. “You do look just like me, though.”
White swallowed hard. “P’Black, come on,” he said. His hands were shaking. “I tried so hard to find you, I’m sorry it took so long—”
Black’s jagged nails dug into White’s cheek, bright electric pinpricks. “Yeah, where have you been all my life, brother mine?”
White couldn’t help it, he started crying. “You said you didn’t blame me for that,” he said, because Black had.
After they drowned, when their parents started talking about White going to Russia, White had nightmares every single night. Usually it was the other way around, Black having nightmares and White crawling into his bed. This time, the last time, Black had to keep coaxing White back to sleep and promising him that it wasn’t his fault. “They were always going to find out, they just want an excuse to get divorced,” he’d said. “It’s not your fault. It’s better that we have it.”
White believed him because he always believed him, because Black didn’t lie to him.
But Black was mad. Black didn’t forgive him for getting them separated after all.
“Don’t come back around here again,” Black said after a moment, throwing White’s face away and stalking back out the door.
White lifted a hand to his face, shocked. The pain was already fading away, a negligible thing if not for the intent behind it. “But,” he said, already starting to follow Black, because he’d never actually listened when Black said this, when they were kids; when Black wanted alone time, that had never once meant White.
“Oh, no you don’t,” the man in coveralls said, hauling White back. “He’s in a mood.”
“Oh, but that’s not—” White said, struggling a little and then giving up when the hand on his upper arm did not so much as flinch. “He doesn’t mean that.” Not for me.
The man stared down at him. “Guess you didn’t leave things on good terms last time you talked?”
With the car door dividing them, as they hold hands through the window? The way their mother had jerked Black back by the collar of his shirt and said, “Say goodbye. Now.” And the car started moving before either of them could say anything else
“I guess not,” he said.
“Come back tomorrow,” the man in coveralls said. “What’s your name?”
“White.”
“Black and White?”
“That’s right.”
The man shook his head, grinning. “Cute,” he said. “Well. Try again tomorrow when he’s less likely to explode.”
White stared at the door that Black had slammed behind him and didn’t see that he had any other option.
His father fussed over the three red half-moon marks on White’s cheek when he came home later. “What did you do,” he said, worrying, tilting White’s head gently to the side to inspect the marks. A lot more gently than Black had grabbed him.
White chose the path of least resistance. “I was just picking at my skin, Pa,” he lied.
His father clicked his tongue, immediately more interested in scolding then worrying. “I thought we had gotten you to stop that,” he said, dropping White’s chin. “Son, that’s a disgusting habit, you can’t pick it back up again now that you’re back home.”
His father had spent three years curing white of this habit. “I’ll try,” White promised, rubbing at his face.
Later, in the bathroom mirror, he inspected his face. Black’s face. The three marks left behind where White’s own fingers fit perfectly. The first time his brother had touched him in ten years.
Did Black feel it, when he dug his fingers in?
White, as asked, was back the next day. He went straight in this time, catching what must be half the employees on their lunch break, crowded around an old leather couch and Black sitting on a crate at the head of the table, arguing with someone.
One of them looked up, jaw dropping. “What the fuck, hia,” he said. “You said Black’s brother, not his twin.”
“Sorry,” the man from yesterday said dryly, passing out beers. “I’ll be more specific next time. I think I got the important part across, no?”
“I don’t think so!”
White already did not want to be here. There was a familiar exasperation edging at the back of his mind, the way everyone reacted like they’d never met twins before, and even when they were little, he never fit in with Black’s friends. They were always louder than him and rougher than him, and Black fit in anywhere, and White never did.
Black stood, everyone falling quiet. Black had that effect on people.
“You again,” Black said with disdain, picking his way around his friend’s legs to come right up to White again, like a tiger investigating his dinner.
“Me again,” White agreed, putting his head in the tiger’s mouth. “Sorry.”
“Anyone ever tell you you apologize way too fucking much?”
“Yes. You, all the time.”
“Did I,” Black said, unimpressed.
White shrugged.
“Leave.” Black waved his hand back towards the open bay doors, the sunlight streaming through warm on White’s back. “Now.”
But I don’t want to, White thought immediately, which was a little too pathetic, a little too childish to actually say. Maybe before he wouldn’t have minded Black seeing him that way — how could he? — but now that Black was insistent on rejecting him, he didn’t want to reveal his pathetic hand so early. Maybe he did need Black more than Black needed him, but he didn’t have to reveal it to all of Black’s friends. He didn’t want to cry in front of them either. “We need to talk first.”
They could at least have that, if they were in the same city.
Black stared at him, eyes narrowed and jaw working. “Why,” he said eventually, the words flat and undemanding.
“Black,” White snapped, like a wounded animal lashing out. But Black didn’t want an answer, White didn’t even think he wanted to twist the knife he’d just stuck in White’s gut — why? — so much as he just genuinely didn’t see a reason for it. To him, White had been reduced down to a childhood memory that needn’t be revisited.
Something in Black snapped too, the set of his face empty. He dug his fingers into White’s shoulder and twisted him around, towards the door.
The second time his brother touched him in ten years and he was forcing White out.
“Don’t come back,” Black said, shoving White out the doors.
He didn’t close the door behind him. He just expected that White would do what he was told and leave, and it was true that when they were kids, maybe White would have listened — but he wouldn’t have. Black was his big brother, true, but they were the exact same age and White didn’t ever listen to him if he didn’t want to. Black either expected it now because he expected everyone to listen to his orders or because he, like White, had forgotten the true shape of his brother.
White remembered Black much kinder.
“Do you seriously have to be so mean to your brother,” one of the guys inside the garage said, voice floating. “He’s got your face and everything.”
“Shut up.”
“No, really—he’s so… clean.” That was a different voice, laughter barely concealed. “You’re nothing alike! I didn’t know you could look so cute, you know—”
“He looked like—”
“All of you shut up,” Black said, voice harsh and commanding like running up against a concrete wall.
It used to be a little softer, when he talked to White. He always had that tone, the tone you couldn’t argue with, but White had used to argue, and Black would soften when he did. Just a little. Now Black was blank, his eyes like flat black rocks when he looked at White. And maybe it was naïve to hope that nothing would have changed after ten years — how could it have stayed the same? — but White, at least, had never been able to carve away the part of himself that had a brother.
White swallowed hard, turning to walk away. He didn’t want to keep hearing Black’s friends laugh at him and he lived here now. He had plenty of time to convince Black to change his mind.
It should feel less like giving up to walk away, then, but it didn’t.
White didn’t feel someone lift his wallet. He did get a few steps away and realize his back pocket was lighter than normal, though. He turned around immediately and saw one of Black’s friends holding up his brown leather wallet.
“Hey,” White said, frowning. “That’s mine.”
“What language is this,” the guy said, clearly inspecting White’s Russian ID. “You not Thai?”
“I lived in Russia until recently.” Short and to the point. Black clearly hadn’t told any of his friends about White, not that White had told anyone about Black, and this was a normal explanation for people to accept.
“Did you,” the guy said, grinning. “Was that cool?”
“Cold, even.”
The guy laughed, passing the wallet back to White. “I like you, you’re way funnier than Black,” he said. “I’m Yok.”
“White.”
“Black and White?” Yok didn’t pause for White to answer, just continued to bulldoze. “Black asked me to make sure you got to the bus stop alright, but I think you’re probably fine.”
Warmth spread through White, the sun coming out after a long day of clouds. “P’Black asked for that?”
“Well, he didn’t really ask so much as make me,” Yok said, voice a little bitter. “Said he didn’t trust you as far as he could throw you, but I think he really thought you were going to get robbed.”
“I did, technically.”
“I gave it back!”
“Thank you for that,” White said, meaning it. “Black doesn’t like it when his friends rob me.”
Yok widened his eyes. “That happen a lot?”
White shrugged. Not anymore. The last person who had robbed White had ended up with a broken arm once Black found out about it, no matter that they’d been friends since the start of the school year. Black was always finding new friends to get in trouble with. They’d been eleven, and it had worried their parents. “I can get to the bus stop by myself,” he said, tucking the wallet back into his pocket. “But thanks.”
“Naw, I’ll walk with you,” Yok said, falling into step with him. “I’m going home too anyways! I broke my bike so hia has to fix it and I’m on the bus. You don’t look like a bus kind of guy.”
“I don’t have a Thai license yet,” White said, instead of explaining that he was too paranoid about what his father might find out.
“You should get one.”
“I know,” White said, because he had been putting it off for a month and his father had also been getting on him about it.
Yok kept him company the entire way to the bus stop, then on the bus too, constantly chatting. He was nice, White decided on the bus, even if he had robbed White. He couldn’t really see how Black and Yok were friends — Yok talked too much for someone like Black, and when he talked about Black specifically, he clearly only wanted to know the answer to his questions to have some ammo. But he was at least a part of Black’s life that was here.
“Will you tell Black I’ll come back on Wednesday?” White had work the rest of the week, grueling hours, and his father wanted him at dinner with some old colleagues tomorrow. And Wednesday, of course, would be drinks.
“Why not tomorrow?”
“I work,” White said, then, “Yok, you’re holding the bus up.”
“Oh!” Yok hopped off the bus, hollering see you Wednesday! as the bus took White away.
Two days away from Black and White felt the absence keenly, like a thin sharp blade against his neck. When he swallowed, he felt the distance; when he turned on his heel as a coworker called him, he felt unsettled. He hadn’t felt like that in so long and just seeing Black for a bare minimum of five minutes had completely torn him apart.
Did Black not miss him? They may have grown used to being apart but White was bleeding out, the wound reopened, and he didn’t know if Black felt anything at all.
“You again,” one of Black’s friends said when White came in on Wednesday, leaning up for a motorcycle. “You’re stubborn, huh.”
White shrugged. “Is he here?”
“Yup,” the guy said, looking White up and down. “Where’d you fucking come from, a wedding?”
White rolled his eyes. He was wearing a suit, having just come from work. “I work in an office,” he said. “Where’s Black?”
“Not here yet,” the guy said, shrugging. “Want a smoke?”
White sighed. He’d taken a gamble and now he was remembering why he never made bets. When it came to his brother, he was never ever lucky. “Thank you, no.”
The guy rolled his eyes, pulling a cigarette case out of his pocket. “It’s just a cigarette, not a life debt.” He held it out, a swipe of grease transferred from his hands to the filter. “I’m not gonna charge you. Even though you look like you can fucking pay.”
“I just don’t smoke,” White clarified, cataloging this guy’s relationship and Black’s relationship as pretty bad. He shouldn’t be surprised. Even to friends — even to his brother — Black could be unbearably harsh, and White had already clocked the small, busy garage as one of those small places where everyone was family.
The guy shrugged and stuck it in his mouth. “I’m Sean.”
“White.”
“Black and White?”
White hadn’t minded the first one, because it was familiar in a way very little had been the past ten years, but now that he was on joke three, he realized he hadn’t actually hadn’t missed these jokes at all. “Black didn’t tell you?”
“Nope. He said if we talked to you at all, he’d kill us.” Sean grinned. “So.”
“So you’re talking to me,” White surmised. Why not. It wasn’t his problem if Sean wanted to get his face caved in. He’d find it funny if he weren’t the focus of the interrogation, but he hardly felt he could handle a mean comment without crumbling to pieces, let alone a lot of prying questions about him and Black.
Sean grinned. “We all want to know how Black pissed you off so bad.”
“Me?” How’d they get that idea? The last time White was here, Black barely bothered to talk to him, everyone had made fun of him, White nearly cried, and Black had physically shoved him out the door.
“Yeah, you just kept arguing with him,” Sean said, blowing out smoke. White coughed, delicately, and Sean obligingly held the cigarette father away. “So we figured you were mad.”
White stared at him, discomfited. He hadn’t realized he was but there it was, like pulling back the covers and finding something had made a nest in his sheets. “Well,” he said. “That’s really not your business.”
“You shouldn’t be saying anything at all,” Black said.
White hadn’t noticed anyone come in. But there Black was, staring White down, even as the older one, the one they all called hia, pulled him back by the shoulder.
“White,” the man said. “Nice to see you again.”
“Thank you,” White said, and realized he hadn’t actually asked the man’s name either of the previous times he’d been in here. “I’m so sorry, I actually didn’t get your name last time?”
“Ah, it’s Gumpa, but the boys call me hia,” Gumpa said, unbothered. “You can too.”
“No the fuck he can’t, hia,” Black snapped, and White winced. He’d kill for Black to call him nong again, to be so familiar. He was so familiar with everyone here; they argued with him and put their hands on his shoulder and understood at least some of him, even if he never explained it, which was more than White could say at this moment. He’d settled for Black just using his name.
“We really need to talk,” White insisted. Behind him, Sean let out a quiet laugh, and White realized this must be what he was talking about, just his continued insistence that they talk. Sean took that as anger instead of begging.
“No.”
“We have to.”
“Let me guess, you’re not going away until we do.”
White nodded. He tried to temper it, to not unveil the sharp, brutal anger that he hadn’t thought himself capable of before just a few minutes ago. He didn’t want to waste time being angry. All things considered, he’d really have his brother in his life than out of it, any of him, no matter what he had to put aside to win this. “Please.”
Black inspected him.
“How did you find me,” Black said after a moment, clicking his jaw the way he always did. It always reminded White a little of a snake, like Black might just decide to open his mouth and swallow him whole.
“Oh,” White said. “I saw Todd at a party last week and he told me where you were.”
He got no warning. Black just moved, like a lightning strike.
White choked before he realized what was happening, the line of Black’s arm a bar across his windpipe. Strangulation felt strangely like drowning again.
“Tell me what the fuck Todd send you for,” Black snarled, his mouth an angry smear.
White couldn’t. Couldn’t even think, really. Black forced all the air in his body out, sent his head spinning and his eyes rolling to the back of his head. His body didn’t know he couldn’t breathe and he kept trying, only to meet unrelenting force. The edges of his vision went blurred, hot tears dripping down his cheeks and Black’s eyes widening back, his own face red—
“What are you doing to me,” Black choked out, hands loosening and White, just before he really passed out, realized why—
“Black!” Gumpa shoved Black away handily, shoving him across the room.
Dizzying relief flooded White’s lungs.
“Fuck, Black, what’s wrong with you,” Gumpa said, digging his fingers into Black’s shoulder.
White slumped against the wall, the room spinning and spotted black. His lungs didn’t want to work right, every breathe a cough — and it ached — and he also could not stop himself from breathing, even though it hurt and every cough pressurized his head.
Even when he breathed in, it didn’t feel like relief. It didn’t even feel like breathing.
Black was breathing harsh too, his face a suffocating red. “What did you fucking do to me,” he said again, voice hoarse.
We match, White thought hysterically. He hadn’t said anything yet, but if he did, they would. They would still match.
“Hey, hey,” someone said, swooping in to help him sit because he could just slide down the wall into a crumbled pile.
“Sean,” White managed to say and he shouldn’t have tried to say anything at all because it felt like he was talking with a boot pressed to his throat, and White was going to explode right here in the garage from the pressure.
The drowning had hurt less.
“Yeah,” Sean said, rubbing his back and actually sounding sympathetic. “He really fucked you up. Can you breathe okay?”
White nodded — that hurt too — then raised his hand to his throat, like he could hold it together until it worked right, except his hand fit perfectly exactly everywhere that it hurt.
Because they were twins.
Black swam into focus, an angry smear as he tried to get back to White. See, White thought dimly. He has to come back to take care of me.
But they were still being separated, Gumpa and another guy holding Black back, their arms caging him in. Sean’s hand on White’s shoulder keeping him in place. Even together, they were apart, how could Black not be mad—
“You can’t just fucking let that go, hia—” Black was saying, jabbing his finger over Gumpa’s shoulder.
Right. Black did this. They weren’t separated, Black was separating them. Last time they drowned, it was White’s fault; this time, Black had done it to him.
“—the fuck is wrong with you,” Yok was yelling, “You nearly killed him—”
But Black couldn’t have been trying to kill him. He couldn’t have been.
“I’m fine,” White rasped out. Sean winced. No one else heard him, his voice was so strained. “I’m fine,” he tried again, louder, which just made him start coughing again.
“Stop that,” Sean said.
“It is not fine.” Gumpa shoved Black behind him again. “White. Let me see your throat.”
White leant back against the wall, Sean still mostly holding him upright, and let Gumpa inspect his throat, rough fingers gentle as White breathed in and out and let the room focus around him. “Get him some water, Yok,” he said.
“You don’t even know him, hia,” Black said darkly, and White stared at him.
Maybe Black had been trying to kill him. Maybe Black didn’t think anymore that if White died, he’d too. Was that why Black wanted them apart, because the connection between them had always been so dangerous, their parents always speaking in quiet whispers about how far it could go—
“I’m fine,” White said, waving off the water bottle Yok tried to hand to him. This statement was betrayed by his legs as he tried to get up, even as he braced his hand against the wall.
“You’re not fine,” Yok said, sticking the water bottle against White’s face.
“I’ll come back tomorrow.” He clearly couldn’t leave Black alone for long.
“You are fucking insane,” Sean said, right as Black yelled, “I’ll kill you for real if I see you here tomorrow! The fuck did you do to me?”
“Sean,” Gumpa said, voice dark like a storm with anger, “Drive him home.”
“I’m really fine.”
“You just got strangled. Sean’s driving you home.”
White managed a tired nod. Everything made him hurt. Sean helping him off the floor made him hurt, being ushered into the front seat of the truck made him hurt and he couldn’t hold his head up. His temple dropped against the window, his hand still on his throat. And staring at Black yelling at his friend, the one who held him back, through the window as the truck pulled away—
It hurt.
White knew what set his brother off; he just didn’t know why. Todd was the only reason White had even found Black. Their father had no answers he was willing to give, Black had no social media that White could find, and their mother was no easier to talk to then she’d been ten years ago.
Of course she wouldn’t just tell him where Black was.
“It’s better off if you forget about him,” she said kindly, parroting exactly what her ex-husband said, like maybe they’d actually kept in touch all these years just to coordinate keeping their sons apart. “Black has his own life, you should live yours.”
“That will be up to me and Black,” White had said, sitting across the desk from her, because he’d had to come to her public office to see her. The staff had just let him walk in, calling him by his brother’s name.
She shook her head, earrings tapping against her cheek. “I’m sorry, White,” she said, and to her credit, she sounded it. “I’m trying to save you some heartbreak. He won’t be happy to see you.”
“Okay,” White said, and left with no goodbye.
At the time, White thought it funny that she thought he would trust that. He only came to her because he had no other choice.
It was Todd who actually had the answers. White had been at some work party and someone had smoothed a hand over the shoulder of his suit jacket, overly familiar. “Wow,” this person said, and White was already leaning away before the grown-up face matched the childish one in his mind. He hadn’t thought about Todd in years. “You really do look exactly like him.”
White nearly dropped his glass of wine. “You’ve seen Black?”
White hadn’t even thought about contacting any of his old friends from childhood — surely some of them would have gone to high school with Black, knew a little bit more about him. But as it was, White hadn’t thought about any of their friends in ten years.
And here was Todd, holding a champagne glass. “Not lately,” he said, grinning. “He’s mad at me.”
White did not, frankly, care. “Do you know where I can find him?”
And Todd did. He told White where Black went to school and the name of a few of his friends, and that Black had even been living with him for a few months — “Black and your mae cut ties years ago,” Todd whispered conspiratorially, like it was the hottest gossip. White leaned closer, imagining that two years ago, when it happened, it was. It would have traveled the circles that White’s parents were in, that he was now in.
The way Todd talked, it was like he and Black were brothers, or something closer than family. It curled White’s stomach, the wine sitting heavily. He should know these things. He should have been there with Black. He shouldn’t have someone else tell them to him.
But at least he had Black’s address.
And now he had Black’s puzzling rage. The way Todd talked, it was like he and Black had a secret world no one else knew. He’d said Black was mad at him, in the offhanded way that White filled in the gaps of — Black was always mad at someone.
But Black wasn’t mad. Black was war-torn.
Trusting Todd had clearly been a mistake. Maybe White could go tomorrow and apologize. Say he’d never talk to Todd again. Ask Black to explain why they were mad at Todd now.
And Black would forgive him. He always did.
White asked Sean to drop him off a little further away from the house than normal, which Sean had protested until White had said, as firmly as one could when they could barely speak, that he didn’t want his father to find out what had happened to him.
He’d inspected his throat in the vanity mirror, and the skin right under his ear, where Black’s fingers had dug in, were a deep red, already bruising. He couldn’t do anything about that right now except hope his father wasn’t home, because there was no possible lie he could come up with. He’d run through everything, but there was nothing believable. If he said he got mugged, or attacked, his father would barely let him out of the house, and White needed to see Black again.
“Thank you for the ride,” White said. He tried to speak normally, but it was almost nothing.
“Stop talking,” Sean said, staring at White. Or more accurately White’s throat. “You’re not seriously coming back tomorrow.”
“Well, I certainly can’t go into work like this,” White rasped out, flipping the visor back up. “I feel fine.”
Mostly fine. The car ride had been long, Sean a good driver, and White had closed his eyes as they drove, half-asleep and missing his brother.
“You’re just insane,” Sean said, in what might have been awe, and then he coaxed the engine back to life and drove off again, leaving White on the sidewalk alone with his thoughts.
He ducked his head when he came in, begging off dinner saying that he felt bad, that he had a horrible cough. His father didn’t ask any questions upon hearing his voice, so White could collapse freely on his bed and cough over and over, thinking about how the first thing his brother had done to him—
But Black had felt it. What are you doing to me, he’d asked, like he could forget the pain that defined half their lives, nested in both their bodies.
In the morning, White’s throat was a mass of dark purple, mottled outlines of Black’s fingers on either side. It wasn’t easy getting out of the house — White wore a sweatshirt over the shirt with the highest collar that he owned, but this wasn’t like Moscow, where he could wear sweaters and scarves. And this wasn’t like a hickey, which his father always made little comments about.
But he got out. He told his father he was going to the clinic and got on the bus and went back down to the garage. He didn’t bother hesitating outside this time, just going in.
At first, he thought the garage was empty. After a moment, though, Yok and Sean popped their heads up from a motorcycle. “You’re seriously back,” Yok said, sounding half-delighted, half-disbelieving.
“Yup,” White said hoarsely. “Is Black here?”
“You are seriously single-minded,” Yok said, coming closer. Then, “Shit, he got you really good.” He peered at the deep, dark bruising on White’s neck.
“Mm,” White said. “Is he here?”
“Sean, get him some ice,” Yok called, pressing a finger gently to White’s throat. Sean disappeared into one of the doorways. “Fuck. That looks really bad, you should have put something on it.”
“I iced it last night.”
“I mean like make-up. Someone’s going to call the cops on you with a bruise like that.”
“I guess I should,” White said. He didn’t have any wasn’t sure if he’d be good enough at applying it to make the entire bruise go away, but he was going to have to work again and the bruise was so black it’d take weeks to disappear.
“Here,” Sean said, returning with a bag of peas in his hand. “No ice.”
White stared down at the bag of peas. More than his own brother had offered him. “I’m really — I’m fine. Is Black here?”
“Yeah, he’s in the office,” Sean said, rolling his eyes. “Arguing with hia. About you, probably.”
“I’ll go talk to him,” White said, ignoring the peas and heading towards the back door that Yok helpfully pointed out towards him. He could hear the argument from halfway across the garage, blurred noises that resolved into Black’s voice.
White would know it anywhere, even saying what it said.
Sean was right. It was an argument about him. White paused just outside the door — no matter what Black said when they were kids, eavesdropping had its uses. But he didn’t like what he was hearing, not at all. Not the way Black talked about him, like a bit of trash or a stray that had to be dealt with. Gumpa was being perfectly nice, but Black—
“—understand why you don’t just talk to him—”
“No,” Black said. “He can’t be trusted.”
Oh.
“Black, he’s your brother.”
“I don’t care if he has my fucking face and he’s my fucking twin, you can’t trust anything he’s saying,” Black said. “You don’t know who — don’t tell him anything. You can’t trust that.”
White swallowed, hard, against the bruises on the throat. Hearing that hurt more than being strangled. The strangling was quick, there and then gone, only a little bit lingering on White’s skin. But that Black didn’t trust him? It was more than the bruises, more than the knife, more than the time White got lost and was mildly hypothermic by the time his father found him.
Gumpa rolled his eyes, which was also the moment he caught White standing in the doorway, eyes wide and clearly listening to everything. “Black—”
“If he’s my brother, you can fucking trust me to handle it,” Black said, not to be deterred. “It’s not anyone else’s fucking business.”
“Black,” Gumpa snapped, turning Black around. “You aren’t handling it. Talk to your brother. I don’t have time for this.”
“You don’t have—” and then Black caught sight of White, standing there. “Seriously?”
“Handle it,” Gumpa said sternly, then he skirted around White in the middle of the doorway without even touching him and disappeared. White’d like to disappear too, fade away into nothing instead of stand here with his brother who didn’t even trust him—
“Why are you crying,” Black said, exasperated. Just the way he did when they were kids and he had to find White tucked away in some corner in the school, because he always knew when White was upset.
Of course he did.
Back then, White would always tell him everything that was wrong. Now, there was nothing wrong but him. “I’m fine, phi,” White said, because he had enough pride, apparently, not to admit he was the problem.
“You overheard me?”
White winced. “Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to, just that you’re very loud.”
“And you were eavesdropping, you fucking sneak.”
“Mm,” White agreed, wiping at his eyes, under the lens of his glasses. He wasn’t exactly ashamed of it, though the awareness that he should be was creeping in slow, like ice, because he wasn’t supposed to do things like that. Black wouldn’t have cared, before.
Black would have been able to trust him before.
“I just —” White reached out to touch Black and then remembered he shouldn’t, pulling back his hands and folding them against his chest awkwardly. “Sorry. I won’t —” he swallowed. “I guess Pa really was right, huh.”
“Pa?”
Black said it like an alien word. White supposed it was.
“He always said that I would just be inconveniencing you if I came back,” White said faintly. How many times had his father said that? That their lives should be separate? Maybe White should have believed him.
“Can you seriously stop crying,” Black said.
“I’m trying,” White said, rubbing at his eyes. “I can’t just turn it off, you know.”
Black sighed, gusty and fed-up. “Hurry up and stop,” he said. “Then leave.”
“Yeah.”
“You will leave this time, right?”
White nodded slowly. He’d like to say he knew where he wasn’t wanted, but he hadn’t for the past three days. Because he hadn’t really understood that Black didn’t want him. He thought — he didn’t know what he thought. Something horribly stupid, something that his father would say Oh, White, about. White, not knowing where he wasn’t wanted.
He just wished he knew why.
“Can I give you my number, just in case you — in case you need something?”
Black eyed him like he was a particularly venomous snake. “No.”
“But—”
“What could I possibly need from you,” Black said with finality. “Leave.”
But he left first, leaving the door of the office hanging open behind him.
White — well, he didn’t think that was fair, really, but Black didn’t have to play by any fair rules. He didn’t want White in his life, he didn’t trust White in his life, that was it. White could have dealt with anything else. He would have tried for months. Years. Anything to get Black to love him again — he used to think the worst thing in the world would be Black not liking him anymore, and he worried about it, idiotically, when they were kids and Black went off to play with other friends. He’d always known he’d do anything he had to to make sure that didn’t happen.
But Black didn’t trust him.
“You should go,” someone said and White flinched back, like a hit was coming, but it was only Gumpa, a sympathetic look on his face, and Yok, hovering behind him with a look of vague horror.
“I should,” White said distantly. He didn’t belong here. “Um, could I give you—”
“I’m sorry, White,” Gumpa said kindly. “I don’t think that’s a very good idea.”
White smiled, hiccupping. “Okay. I understand. Um. Thank you, for—” he stared at the end of the garage, the car wash that Black had disappeared through. He swore he could feel his brother on the other side of it, the ties between them stretched thin and fraying. “For taking care of him,” he finished. He was glad Black had that. If he couldn’t be there for Black, then he was glad there was someone for him, even if that someone was just his boss and his coworkers.
It was more than what White had, anyways.
“If Black wants to find you, he’ll be able to find you. Don’t worry.”
White shook his head. “Thank you. But Black never changes his mind.”
There had been a time when this hadn’t been true for White, only for everyone else, but it was painfully clear that that sort of affection no longer existed.
His father’s house ached, a misaligned tooth to worry his tongue over, and White still had to walk back into it even though he wasn’t supposed to be here. He should be with Black. He should be good enough to be with Black, even if it was just in that garage and not even Black’s own apartment. He could handle not being allowed in Black’s apartment, if he was allowed somewhere.
“You look terrible,” his father said, clicking his tongue as he put his book down. “What did the clinic say?”
“Just a bad cold.” Maybe he should have said the flu. The bruises would fade by the time he got over something like that. But his father would be more worried if it was the flu, and White had picked up some cheap make-up on the way home to smear over the bruises, though it probably wouldn’t manage to cover up the darkest parts right under his jaw, and he just needed to be upstairs.
Maybe he really will be sick, right here.
“You should go right back to sleep,” his father said. “I’ll bring you something to eat later. Your favorite soup.”
“Okay,” White agreed. Anything to stop his father’s horrible concern. Black hadn’t cared at all. His father cared too much. His father cared so much that Black stopped caring.
That wasn’t fair. That White had one and not the other. He wouldn’t have chosen if he had a choice. He would have chosen Black. Why didn’t Black choose him?
He supposed he’d thought Black was trying to protect him, that first day when he pushed him away. To keep him out. Todd had said what Black was doing was illegal and dangerous. Their mother had said that Black was a bad influence. How long had she been telling Black that? It didn’t matter; White was determined to disprove it.
You can’t trust him, though. White couldn’t disprove that.
Maybe White had changed too much. Black hadn’t. Black might be angry, he might be harsh, but he was still clearly himself. A version that grew up betrayed and angry without White there to temper him, but White could still track the new lines of him like a map.
He didn’t know if Black could do the same to him, trace his thumb along the familiar rivers and roads. Maybe he got one bridge too far and White lost the right to be his brother, somewhere between one country and the next. Something so different and wrong that Black did not trust him. Was it his job, was it the way he still lived with their father, was it something about the way he sought Black out?
Did Black just think he was wrong, now? That they’d always been wrong?
Three days after his brother removed him from his life, White woke up at four in the morning in a wash of pain, his cheek burning as he staggered out of bed. He banged his knee against the bedside table but nothing else came, no more pain, just a horrifying rush of embarrassment in the pit of his stomach. Still, when he cradled his hand against his cheek, he almost expected his fingers to dip into a broken hollow somehow.
In the mirror, his cheek was round and smooth under the bathroom lights.
“It wasn’t really strong enough to break something,” White mumbled to his reflection. It was just a surprise. It woke him. It wasn’t even close to the worst pain they’d ever felt, even as it consolidated into a throbbing ache just under his cheekbone.
On his brother’s face, it would bruise. But on his, there was nothing. There never was.
But at least White could be reasonably sure that Black wasn’t dying somewhere without him. Black’s heart was livid in White’s chest, a riot of rage and something like grief.
White dug his fingers into his cheek, in the center where the pain was worst, and burrowed back under the covers. It was awkward like this, bad cheek to the pillow, hand at a weird angle under his face, but he wanted to fall asleep like this, curled around the memory of pain. Would Black would feel the sting against everything else that was being done to him or if Black had simply discarded it the same way he discarded White?
White would rather have it this way. That he could feel Black, even still, if he could not be in his life.
White was kind of kicking himself for not getting Yok of Sean’s number, even if Gumpa wouldn’t give it to him — Sean might be interested enough in antagonizing Black enough that he genuinely might have given White a status update on Black’s face. But even if he did, White might have been too embarrassed to ask, considering everyone had seen Black sever their relationship.
But Black found him again instead.
White actually thought he was being mugged, when the passenger side door swung open. He was thinking ah, fuck, that should have been locked, shouldn’t it? as he sat in the work parking lot after dark, approximately three hours after work should have ended, dreading going home—
But it was Black. “Phi!”
“Nice ride,” Black said, completely flat.
“You scared me, I thought I was getting mugged!”
Black looked at him, still flat and alien. “Yeah,” he replied.
“I—” White breathed in deep, heart still racing. “Stop that,” he scolded. Black used to jump out at him from behind doors and over hedges, just to scare him. He said it was fun, because it wasn’t like he’d ever be scared enough for his own heart to race like White’s did. “It wasn’t funny when we were ten and it’s not funny now.”
“It’s a little funny.”
White ignored that. “What are you doing here?”
“Can’t I?”
“Of course you can,” White replied, a strangely sharp sense of relief replacing the miasma in his chest. Was it no big deal? Had White been taking it too seriously, Black’s anger? He wasn’t used to it anymore; he didn’t know how to absorb the blows.
Black sighed through his nose. “Come on. Let’s go somewhere.”
White stuck his keys in the ignition. “Bend down so no one sees you,” he said.
“What, a guy can’t pick up his baby brother from work?”
“I don’t want anyone to tell Pa I saw you,” White replied, and Black narrowed his eyes at him and then apparently decided the fight wasn’t worth it and bent in half so that if you looked through the window of the car, it was just White there, alone like always.
Even bent in half like this, Black directed him to turn left, then right, through a few lights, until White realized they were heading towards his apartment. White had been there a few times, not that Black had ever answered. But Black, now sitting up, stopped them several blocks away near a food truck. “Get out,” he told White, swinging his own door open. “We’re eating.”
“You could ask,” White muttered under his breath, enough that Black, already in line for food, wouldn’t hear it. He was too scared to voice it properly, in case Black changed his mind about what he was doing here. Not that White knew what Black was doing here, and he was too scared to ask after Black had brushed him off in the car, and settled for hovering at his brother’s shoulder as they waited in line.
“Phi,” he started, then Black turned his face towards him. “Black!”
He hadn’t seen it in the dark of the car park, but he could now — the smeared purple-black ache that covered Black’s left cheek and the swelling around his eye. “Phi, you—”
“Shut the fuck up,” Black replied, tired. White hated to see him that way.
“But what happened,” White pleaded, stepping a little closer. He glanced around, then said as quietly as he could, “Four in the morning? Really?”
Black’s gaze snapped to him immediately. “How did you know that.”
What a useless question. White allowed it, though. Black didn’t have a way to know for sure that their connection wasn’t permanently broken. Black’s suffocation at his own hands could be explained away. Most people would feel strange after strangling their brother. “Of course I know,” White said. “What did you do?”
“Saw mae,” Black sneered, the expression twisting his swollen eye. “She wasn’t happy I saw you, you know.”
White’s jaw dropped. “She did that?”
“Hit me with a bookend,” Black replied. “I think.”
White cupped his brother’s cheek without even thinking, tilting him towards the yellow light of the food truck. Black allowed it, his cheek all mottled and a little hot to the touch. White’s finger landed on a spot he hadn’t particularly realized was still sore — but now he realized the quiet ache of the past week was probably that one of Black’s teeth had cracked under the blow. “It’s my fault.”
Black’s gaze slid to the side. “You think she cares whose fucking fault it is?”
Like that needed an answer.
“You probably know she cut me off,” Black said. “Wasn’t really going back with permission.”
“But she’s supposed to be better than that.” Not that that had ever mattered to their mother, but she’d never hit them when they were children. The most she ever did was drag them by the hand somewhere, which White never liked either, but he could hardly reconcile that woman with someone who hit her son in the face with a book at four in the morning. Left him like this.
You needed me there, White thought hysterically. I should have been there. “Black—”
“What do you want to eat,” Black said, jerking his face out of White’s hand, turning his shoulder on him to stare up at the sign and order from the exasperated auntie, tension bleeding from the line of his back so strongly that White couldn’t touch.
White was defeated. “The red curry.”
“Pad see ew,” Black said, and he’d effectively cut the conversation in half, White on one side, aching for answers, and Black on the other, a brick wall. White didn’t know that he was strong enough to start tearing the wall down with his hands; maybe Black was counting on that weakness, but how could White not keep trying when his brother was on the other side?
Black didn’t even chew on the left side of his mouth, that’s how much it hurt.
And White wanted something. He leaned forward, just a little bit. “Why are you here?” Maybe Black would give him this? “I thought—”
“You gave up,” Black replied, digging around in his noodles for bits of chicken.
White shrank back. “You were testing me?”
“No, I really wanted you fucking gone.”
“But then why—”
“That’s my own business,” Black replied, then, visibly struggling, added, “Tell me about yourself instead. What happened?”
White stared at him, oddly touched that Black was trying. “In Moscow?”
Black gave him a grim sort of smile. “Yeah. In Russia. How was it? Did you make friends?”
White winced. “I guess,” he said, thinking about the people he’d left behind who he didn’t miss and who didn’t miss him, and the ones that he did miss and that had made it very hard to come back. “It was fine. I kept wanting to come home to Thailand for the holidays, but Pa said it was best for us if we didn’t see each other anymore.” He shrugged, a motion too casual for what all he felt. “Um, I couldn’t really speak Russian well enough the first year, so I nearly failed, and then after that I went to boarding school. It was alright. And I just graduated, so. I’m back.”
“You’re back,” Black echoed.
This was a very paltry summation of the last ten years, but Black didn’t seem inclined to break it apart further. “And you?”
Black shrugged. “Like you’d expect.”
“Black.” This felt more like a mock-trial debate or a legal defense than any sort of reunion, like White had to think up opening and closing arguments on why he should be allowed in his brother’s life. He’d only ever been good at mock-trial when it wasn’t something he wasn’t emotional about. “I really want to know.”
Black considered. “About the same,” he conceded. “Stayed here, went to school. Mae kicked me out a couple of years back, you probably heard.”
It was present everywhere White went. Black used to move in the same circles as White did. Half of the people his father talked to at these parties remembered White, but nearly all of them remembered Black. Black had been kicked out. Black had dropped out of school. And White still didn’t know what Black had even wanted to study, or if he’d managed to go back.
“I heard,” he said. “She didn’t tell me, though. She just said I was better off without you.”
Maybe he shouldn’t have said that part.
“She’s probably right,” Black said contemplatively, sticking a cigarette in his mouth to prove the point. “I do a lot of fucking shit, you know? You don’t look like you’ll get it.”
No. They were people from two different worlds sitting here, White in his suit and Black in his torn jeans, lighting his cigarette. White on the right side, Black on the wrong. If it was wrong. White didn’t know. He didn’t even know if what Todd said was true. It didn’t really matter.
“I trust you,” White said. Even if Black didn’t trust him back.
Black watched him. “You don’t even know me.”
“I do,” White protested. Black couldn’t have changed that much that there was nothing recognizable in him. White could dig it out.
“Well, I don’t know you,” Black pointed out, blowing out smoke.
“But we could get to know each other again.” White prodded his chopsticks against his plate, a little ashamed he couldn’t manage to look Black in the eye to say this. “I know — I know we’re strangers now. For years. But I missed you, phi. And if I’m back, I want to be part of your life.”
“Hm,” Black said.
“Even a small one,” White amended. He’d take what he could get; he’d worm his way into the rest later like he always did. Black never understood this methodology, he liked to start big and flashy, but White had a lot more patience. Black could rarely withstand him.
“Even after I did that to you?”
White rubbed at his throat, where his own bruises had finally faded. “Yes,” he said simply.
Black exhaled, smoke obscuring his face. The purple bruising blurred elegantly. “Fine.” He held his hand out. “Give me your number.”